When you think about who is going to be hit the hardest by pollution, whether it’s conventional air water and soil pollution or climate change, it is very often low-income communities and communities of color. The undercutting of these kinds of protections is going to have a disproportionate impact on these very same communities.
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Department of Veterans Affairs
Toxins, has led to historic increases in mandatory VBA spending in recent years. The VA has a time-phased plan to reassess the VASRD and its ratings for compensation, but this internal process can be slow and laborious, requires Office of Management and Budget (OMB) approvals, and can become politically charged both in Congress and with VSOs.
• Thenext Administration should explore how VASRD reviews could be accelerated with clearance from OMB to target significant cost savings from revising disability rating awards for future claimants while preserving them fully or partially for existing claimants.
• The VBA’s Information Technology top-line budget should be reexamined and reassessed in light of the need for expanded automation across the enterprise.
• Traditionally, VHA captures the large majority of VA IT funding. The VBA needs to make the case for a larger IT budget with clear requirements to support that request.
Personnel
• Pursue reforms of the Human Capital Management process and operations within the VBA to build a more blended workforce with more contractors to process claims. This would free federal employees to perform other duties and be involved solely with the final decision to award benefits.
• Improve the VBA acquisition workforce. The VBA needs more world-class contractor support. Currently, few of the top companies have contracts with the VBA, and the VBA needs to conduct more outreach to the private sector through senior leader engagement and industry conferences.
• To identify more effective and efficient ways to complete claims, establish a knowledge exchange program with top-tier private-sector companies that do similar work. The VBA is fundamentally a financial services organization. A significant amount of its work has a private-sector analogue that could be leveraged to improve service to veterans.
• For most ofits existence, the VBA has been a risk-averse, insular, paper-based organization, implementing technology only over the past decade. This insularity has led to a predominantly “build it ourselves” approach, partly because VBA staff has limited experience or insight into current privatesector tools and methods and partly because the VBA struggles to compete